Forums

I am in the graduate program to become an elementary school teacher.  A main component of science learning is teacher guided student inquiry.  But what if I'm asking open ended questions to generate discussion and no one responds?  If I reformat the question in a different way or move to another question, and still no one responds?  I would be tempted to carry on the discussion myself just to fill the long awkward silence but that would not be benefical to my future students.  How can you ensure students will participate and engage in discussion?

Hello,

I am also in a graduate program to become an elementary school teacher.  While I am not a classroom teacher, I do teach small groups in RTI.  When I come across this issue with my groups, I start calling on individual students to answer, or share their thoughts on what I asked.  I will then call on another student to share their thoughts about what the previous student just said, and whether they agreed, disagreed, and why.  I think that once the students know that even if they don't raise their hand or volunteer, there is still a chance they could get called on, they pay better attention and anticipate having to respond.  Knowing that they are going to be participating may even elicit more voluntary responses from students as the class progresses.